As for hot water & showers, I haven't used hot or warm water in years for mine - newer machines & detergents have essentially eliminated any possible benefit or need to use

Strike 2 is that the drywall is already up & if I don't miss my guess already being finished today - if you might have caught this in the framing stage you might have gotten it, or at least added on pretty cheaply

Woodbridge Environmental Tiptophouse.com pretty much nailed everything but I do take issue with his appliance example especially on production houses - upgraded appliances are a special order & require special handling. Generally what happens is a builder gets a sweet deal on buying 50 or 60 appliance packages up front & they store them on site. Now they have to order ones just for your unit & they basically need to do it as soon as you sign because everything is based on a schedule & they can't wait for them. Is there going to be markup for them doing this - yes. Are they going to add additional profit - yes & by all rights they should. If a company doesn't make any profit, they won't be around long or have any money to cover warranty issues.

Yes that can be a lot of work & what I would have preferred to do is only deal with the first course or two with rebar & then use a product called TimberLocks - 8" long - At the time I was out of them & unlike now where you can get them at a local Home Depot, Lowes, etc... I would have had to order them online - needless to say a little more manual labour won out over waiting a week or two

You definitely want some privacy screening so you might want to see what will work in your area & do that in Phase 1, Then you can start finishing it off in different phases.

As for the vegetable garden, I would definitely go with a raised bed to not only make it easier to tend to, but to make it easier to mow around & keep the weed & grass seeds out of

You may also want to see if they can redo that area around the door to make it blend in better whether you decide to paint it or not because as it is, it will always stand out

Just remember, as soon as you start down the paint or stain arena, there is no going back & the required maintenance required goes up

Beyond that, they sell nail brushes which work great - soap, water & scrub